Mesmer proved his theory by his experiments, which were crowned with complete success. Having observed the analogy between the phenomena of animal magnetism and those of electricity, he made use of metallic conductors, connecting with a common reservoir containing earth and water, so as to absorb and project the two forces. The complicated apparatus of tubs has now been abandoned, as it can be replaced by a living chain of hands superposed upon a circular non-conducting body like a wooden table, or on silk or wool. He subsequently applied to living organised beings the processes of metallic magnetisation and attained certitude as to the reality and similitude of the phenomena which followed. One step only was left for him to take, and it was to affirm that the effects attributed in physics to the four imponderable fluids are diverse manifestations of one and the same force differentiated by its usages, and that this force—inseparable from the first and universal matter which it sets in motion—now resplendent, now igneous, now electric, now magnetic, has but one name, indicated by Moses in Genesis, when he describes its manifestation by the _fiat_ of the Almighty before all substances and all forms: that Word is THE LIGHT—הי אור. Let us now have the courage to affirm one truth which will be acknowledged hereafter. The great thing of the eighteenth century is not the _Encyclopedia_, not the sneering and derisive philosophy of Voltaire, not the negative metaphysics of Diderot and D’Alembert, not the malignant philanthropy of Rousseau: it is the sympathetic and miraculous physics of Mesmer. Mesmer is grand as Prometheus; he has given men that fire from heaven which Franklin could only direct. There was wanting to the genius of Mesmer neither the sanction of hatred nor the consecration of persecution and insult; he was hunted out of Germany, ridiculed in France, which, however, provided him with a fortune, for his cures were evident, and the patients who went to him paid him, though they may have stated afterwards that their restoration was a matter of chance, so that they might not draw down upon themselves the hostility of the learned. The authorised bodies did not even so far honour the thaumaturge as to examine his discovery, and the great man resigned himself perforce to pass for a skilful impostor. It was only the really instructed who were not hostile to mesmerism; sincerely religious persons were alarmed by the dangers of the new discovery, while the superstitious cried out at the scandal and the Magic. The wise foresaw abuses; the imbecile would not so much as tolerate the exercise of this marvellous power. Some thought that the miracles of the Saviour and his saints would be denied in the name of magnetism; others wondered how it would fare with the power of the devil. True religion, notwithstanding, has nothing to fear from the discovery of truth; and further, in putting a limit to human power,